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Saturday, January 31, 2015

Bill Gates's nightmarefrAnkensteIn
Microsoft founder Bill Gates joined other notables who have been warning of the potential for artificial intelligence to get out of control. Real problems could emerge within decades, he said.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Should Facebook flag its own story?
Facebook and iInstagram, both owned by the Facebook company, went down for a while earlier today. Somebody at Facebook said the sites went down because of an internal glitch in a Facebook computer, and gave out that hackers weren't responsible.

Yet, at the same time, other social media sites, such as HipChat and Tinder, also went down.

I suppose that that blackout was also a result of computer glitches happening on those sites in a remarkable case of random coincidence. Couldn't possibly be true that the hacker collective Lizard Squad was, as it implied, responsible.

“This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems. We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100 percent for everyone,” CNBC reports, citing the company’s statement received via email.

Interestingly, Facebook's newsroom is mum on the topic.

So perhaps those stories conveying the views of anonymous FB spokespersons on this incident should be flagged as "false news" put out by corporate types concerned about FB's reputation for security.

Another possibility: the other social media sites have business arrangements with Facebook to use FB technology, but FB said nothing about that.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

CIA'S black ops division

is going out of business

The departure of the head of Clandestine Services shows that the semi-autonomous division has a lost a fateful Washington power struggle, with President Obama's appointee moving to exercise firm control over the agency.

Though the proposed overhaul isn't a done deal, it seems probable that the division's support will be somewhat cool on Capitol Hill -- in the aftermath of the decision to spy on Senate staff members concerning the highly charged "enhanced interrogation" report.

It may be that some in the GOP will accuse Obama of unilateralism, but, as chief executive, he has a great deal of leeway in how departments of government are organized. Lawmakers may be more interested in making hay over the issue than in actually protecting the division.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

SECRET TREATMENTOF EBOLA PATIENTS?Some may regard the Alex Jones web sites as unreliable. This isn't quite fair. The reliability varies. The doctor's claims in the interview linked below make sense in light of the maneuvering to play down anything to do with Ebola in America. For example, if authorities are refusing to disclose which facilities are designated for Ebola patients in order to head off "hysteria," it seems quite likely they wouldn't want attention drawn to those facilities by actual Ebola cases.

Plus, PrisonPlanet published my report on a 9/11 investigation by NIST. So the Jones outfit can't be all bad.

As PrisonPlanet noted:

According to [Sharyl] Attkisson, a CDC representative answering questions on potential Ebola cases admitted that the agency has refused to update their website with current information.

"I called CDC not long ago and I said how many cases are being monitored in the United States and they said 1,400. I said, ‘Where are these updates on your web site?’” Attkisson said. “They said they’re not putting it on the web. This is public information we have a right to know and the media should not hype it, but should cover it.”

The statement comes as no surprise given an admission in Forbes last November that major media outlets had agreed to not report on potential cases for the federal government. [That statement has been modified, but, as shown below, AP has decided to play down coverage.]

“The Associated Press and other press outlets have agreed not to report on suspected cases of Ebola in the United States until a positive viral RNA test is completed,” the article said.

I add that Attkinson made an excellent point: The scary publicity was beneficial, forcing the Obama administration to institute screening at U.S. airports and daily monitoring of persons at risk for Ebola.

The deal to tamp down Ebola coverage -- which as it happens followed President Obama's appointment of a political operative as "Ebola czar" -- is something the New York Times's public editor might wish to examine. However, it should be noted that the Times has at least made a show of continuing to report on Ebola matters.

AP ADMITS DIALING DOWN EBOLA COVERAGEIn an October advisory to editors, the Associated Press told news editors of its decision to play down Ebola coverage.

"We’re increasingly hearing reports of “suspected” cases of Ebola in the United States and Europe. The AP has exercised caution in reporting these cases and will continue to do so.

"Most of these suspected cases turn out to be negative. Our bureaus monitor them, but we have not been moving stories or imagery simply because a doctor suspects Ebola and routine precautions are taken while the patient is tested. To report such a case, we look for a solid source saying Ebola is suspected and some sense the case has caused serious disruption or reaction. Are buildings being closed and substantial numbers of people being evacuated or isolated? Is a plane being diverted? Is the suspected case closely related to another, confirmed Ebola case?

"When we do report a suspected case, we will seek to keep our stories brief and in perspective."

concedes that Alex Jones's site may be playing the sensationalism card. But the publication doesn't wish to discount the reports out of hand because of its experience with press coverage of the Syrian conflict. I would never say that simply because a Catholic Online writer is troubled, we should automatically follow suit. Yet, from a political standpoint, it is noteworthy that Catholic Online publishes the Catholic Encyclopedia,

"There are some immediately apparent questions. Is Infowars playing up the hype for its audience? It's possible, however these claims should be considered. Not all of the news is actually news. Often, the truth is obscured by mainstream media outlets and Americans need to turn to alternative media sources for information. Catholic Online has already confirmed that some kind of coordinated censorship is happening in real time, particularly concerning the terror conflict in Syria and Iraq."

NEWS FLASH: MAN RUSHED TO HOSPITAL ON EBOLA FEAR

If there is any agreement to play down Ebola coverage, it appears that it isn't all that effective.

Still, this story doesn't dispel concerns about secret treatment of Ebola victims. This man was ill, but not with Ebola.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 'FALSE POSITIVES'?

Whenever blood testing is done, there is an error rate. Some errors are "false negatives" (the test fails to detect the disease) and some are "false positives" (the test wrongly indicates presence of disease).

It may seem a good thing that "false positives" aren't finding their way into news reports. Who needs groundless hysteria?

But what's wrong with this picture is that a false positive should require more than another blood test or two to be certain there is no virus present. If a person has an initially low level of virus in his system, other tests done right away could well return negative results. Hence, in a case where a person has been potentially exposed to Ebola, has flu-like symotoms and a positive tes result, the only solution is close monitoring over a period of days or weeks.

And yet, there are at present zero positive cases being reported in America, meaning there have been no recent cases eventually turn out to be false positives. This strongly suggests that either somehow the blood tests are now infallible, or there is collusion to keep Americans unaware of patients who could very well be infected with Ebola.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Eurozone is poised to censor U.S. data,

claims right to control global cyber spaceBy Amelia Rufer

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

The European Union is claiming authority to regulatesearch results that appear on American servers in a proposal regarding the so-called "right to be forgotten," a proposition that is worrisome to U.S. journalists.

Under the current European privacy law, individuals can ask the European versions of search engines to remove links to information about themselves from search results. Sites like Google.uk and Google.de have been forced to comply with the requests unless the information serves a compelling public interest.

Users who want to access the delisted links are switching from European sites like Google.uk or Google.de to Google.com, which is hosted on U.S. servers.

In an attempt to stop the circumvention, Article 29 Working Party (WP29) — a committee of members from the European Data Protection Supervisor, national data protection authorities and the European Commission — proposed last month that individual privacy protection in the "right to be forgotten" grants them authority to regulate search engines worldwide.

The WP29 proposal’s assumption that “the impact of the exercise of individuals’ rights on the freedom of expression of original publishers and users will generally be very limited,” is flawed, according to Emma Llanso, the director of Free Expression at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), a non-profit organization that advocates for digital rights.

“This is a vast understatement; the ‘right to be forgotten’ de-listing regime essentially amounts to a notice-and-takedown system where private parties can demand the removal of links to information that is, as the [Court of Justice of the European Union] recognized, true, public, and lawfully posted online,” says Llanso. “Any legal framework that empowers third parties to interfere with others' access to lawful and public information necessarily raises significant freedom of expression concerns.”

Under U.S. law, take-down requirements usually only follow a successful libel suit, where the information has been found to be both harmful and untrue. The current European privacy statute, which was adopted in May, applies to a much broader swath of information that an individual deems “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive.”

“Journalists and others who live under such a regime may only be able to find a self-selected version of a person's history,” says Llanso. “It is particularly concerning that the European authorities continue to downplay the free expression concerns of this kind of government-authorized interference with the availability of lawful content, as this can serve to legitimize the censorship practices of other governments around the world.”

Furthermore, by regulating what appears at the top of search results, the EU’s proposal is rigging the game in a way that damages the integrity of search engines. These sites are useful to the extent that their results accurately reflect the search terms; failure to provide reliable results can prompt users to switch providers, Llanso says.

This tendency to choose a more reliable provider is the very reason for WP29’s November proposal: European-Google users who switched to Google.com rendered the original statute meaningless.

“The European de-listing regime introduces an independent third party into this mix — the person who's demanding that links be removed from searches on the basis of his name — and complicates things for end-users,” Llanso added. “The guidance from the Working Party 29 shows that there is still a significant divergence of opinion between the Data Protection Authorities and many journalists, researchers, academics, historians, and other free expression advocates.”

As one left-wing commentator noted, "The Intelligence Committee report includes an entire section that details the manner in which the CIA fed leaks of classified information on its interrogation program to the New York Times and the Washington Post to manipulate public opinion in favor of such methods. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, articles were published and television programs produced aimed at legitimizing torture."

Elsewhere we learn that then-CIA chief Michael Hayden had "blessed" a journalist friendly to the torture program with special access to CIA press managers.

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